The Genesis of a Legend

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

We graduated from the UCLA Film School in the summer of 1965. Jim was going to go to New York City, and I was going to stay in L.A. I was sitting on a beach in Venice a month or two after graduation, in the middle of July, thinking, What am I going to do? I've got a masters degree in film, big deal. I don't know anybody in film-- I don't have any relatives in Hollywood. How am I going to get a job making movies? So I'm sitting on the beach looking up at the sun--a beautiful day. And I open my eyes and walking along the shore break, maybe 10-15 yards away, was a guy I recognized--sort of. And I thought, Who? My God, that's Jim Morrison. And I said, "Hey, Jim, Hey Morrison, come over here."
And Jim came from the water with the sun behind him, and I watched the figure with the light spilling around him. It was getting to be about four o'clock, and the light was shimmering around Jim Morrison. And he came up to me, and he looked fabulous. He'd lost thirty pounds--he was a little on the chubby side at UCLA. He looked hard and lean and his hair was grown out.

And I said, "Man, you look great. What have you been doing?"

He said, "Nothing."

"I thought you were going to New York?" He said, "No, I decided to stay here." "What have you been up to?" And he said: "I've been writing songs..." I said, "Whoa, that's interesting, writing songs. Well, sing a song for me. Let me hear one." He knew I was a musician. I knew he was a poet...So he sat down on the beach, and he dug his hands into the sand, and the sand was streaming out.

And he began to sing, "Moonlight Drive" in this really haunting kind of voice. It was soft--a soft, but powerful voice. Almost like Chet Baker used to sing. And when Jim Morrison sang those first words:

"Let's swim to the moon Let's climb through the tide Penetrate the evenin' that the City sleeps to hide...

I thought-- Wow. Those are great lyrics. And he continued the song, and I thought this is one of the best Rock & Roll songs I've ever heard. The lyrics are haunted and psychedelic. They're about life and death and existence and love. As Morrison was singing, I could hear the things that I could play behind it. Just funky kind of. It was a funky song.

And I said, "'Moonlight Drive.' That's fabulous, man. Do you have any other songs?"
And he said, "Yeah, I've got a couple more." And he started to sing a few more songs. I can't recall exactly which ones they were. But they were brilliant. Just Jim's singing and hearing what I could play behind them.
I said, "Wow, hey, let's get a rock and roll band together."

And he said, "That's exactly what I want to do."
And I said, "Fabulous man. Do you have a name for the band?
"Yeah," he told me.
And I said, "Well, what is it?"
And he said, "the Doors."
Ray Manzarek recalls THAT day at the beach!


"The Doors are a hungry looking quartet with an interesting original sound but what is possibly the worst stage appearance in any rock ‘n’ roll group in captivity..The lead singer emotes with his eyes closed, the electric pianist hunches down over his instrument as if reading mysteries from the keyboard, the guitarist drifts around the stage randomly and the drummer seems lost in a separate world."
Pete Johnson. Los Angeles Times.1967

“It was exciting to think about doing something
new. We had the same heroes and inspirations, and it
seemed possible that we would create something really
special. But as much as Ray likes to say he founded The
Doors with Jim and all that, it’s all bullshit to me,
because The Doors did not exist until we hooked up with Robby Krieger- until I brought him to the band, thank you very much. His melodic sense and understanding of song were extremely deep. Without him I can’t imagine what The Doors would have become.”
JohnDensmore.

"We originally had my brothers Jim on harp and Rick
on guitar. We had some rehearsals and cut some demos
but it was going nowhere. We had no gigs and my
brothers said ‘nothing happening here and we have better things to do with our lives.’
Then John said ‘I know a great guitar player’…..
Ray Manzarek.
N.B: Rick Manczarek now helps his mother run Wofford Liquor a deli that sells booze and bait & tackle in Lake Isabella CA. whilst Jim Manczarek works for the City of Compton CA. as a civil servant.

"Ray’s brothers were good musicians but they were like a surf band. I was coming from a different place. I played flamenco and slide and was into urban blues all of which helped the band develop its own sound.
But I think the writing aspect is what I really added. Jim
and I started writing a lot right away and that’s
where the material for the first two albums came from.
But that was unknown to anyone when they hired me.
They liked me because of my slide playing”
Robby Krieger. From Revolver magazine Spring 2000

“I don’t think Jim ever missed a gig. Several times he was so wrecked that it was terrible but for such a wild guy it’s pretty amazing that he made all the gigs and was always able to pull himself together to make records. Of course I’m glad I stayed in The Doors but it was hard. Here I am in the Sixties, flower power and peace and love is everywhere and I am in this band of darkness. What the fuck is this all about?
You don’t join a band as a young kid thinking that
you will have fun until you watch one of your friends
slowly fall apart and die from poisoning himself with
alcohol.
Yet I intuitively knew how to accompany Jim’s lyrics-
to take the snares off my drums and use the dark tom
tom sound. I was in the right place at the right time
but it was hard. I always wished he were a little
happier. But you need the dark to balance the light—life
is not all peace and love—and that was our role. To
balance the light.”
John Densmore. From Revolver magazine Spring 2000.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"In the beginning we were creating our music, ourselves, everynight...starting with a few outlines, maybe a few words for a song.
Sometimes we worked out in Venice, looking at the surf.
We were together a lot and it was good times for all of us. Acid, sun, friends, the ocean, and poetry and music."
- Jim Morrison[/b]


"Remember Jim and I met at film school. We were trying to do the musical equivalent of Ingmar Bergman or Federico Fellini films. What are you gonna do Rock Hudson and Doris Day?
We were trying to do European existentialism and if
that’s dark, so be it.”
Ray Manzarek. From Revolver magazine Spring 2000.

“It was hard living with Jim. It would have been great if we’d just had a guy like Sting- a normal guy who’s extremely talented too. Someone who didn’t have to be on the verge of life and death every second.
The music was all Jim lived for. Often he was at the office when we weren’t. he even lived there sometimes because that was his whole life. We all had lives outside The Doors and he didn’t, and he kind of resented that. He was living it 24 hours a day and we weren’t. And he was right.”
Robby Krieger. From Revolver magazine Spring 2000.

“The Doors are basically a blues orientated band with
heavy doses of rock’n’roll, a modicum of jazz, some
popular elements and a minute quantity of classical
influences….but basically a white blues band.
We started with music, then went into theatre but it was so shitty we went back into music. Back to where we started, just being a rock band. And the music has gottenn progressively better, tighter, more interesting and professional but I think people resent that. I think they resent the fact that when things didn’t change overnight in the great renaissance of spirit, emotion and
revolutionary sentiment that we arte still here doing good music”
Jim Morrison ...Interview 1970.

"Its incredible they got a deal off that first demo because they almost sound incompetent. The female bass player is like a full beat behind on everything”
Bill Siddons Doors roadie and manager on the
Columbia deal in 1966.

From Obscurity to Oblivion: crazy nights on The Strip.

"I first saw them at Ciro’s in 1966- I got to hear about them from Billy James. I got to Ciro’s before The Doors set began and the musicians were setting up on stage. A heckler started yelling at the band ‘ you guys are horrible. You can’t play. You’re crap. You can’t drink, you can’t think, you can’t fight and you can’t fuck’.
He was in dirty clothes and looked dangerous.
The band looked nervous and started playing- and the guy hopped on stage and started singing.
It was Morrison who had been heckling his own band. That was one of the best things I’d ever seen in a club. No introduction- just the singer yelling at the band and then the music. I thought ‘My God these guys are going to be interesting to watch’”
Kim Fowley record producer and lurker on The Strip 1966.

"They had an LA sound but it wasn’t a Sunset Strip
sound. 3 Dog Night the Daily Flash and Rhinoceros all
these Strip bands had at least a little something in
common. The Doors were unique.”
Jimmy Greenspoon of Three Dog Night.

"The fact that the music wasn’t guitar orientated but keyboard driven made it different.
And the words had Drama. Morrison was a great creator
of images. And some of it actually scared me. It was
insight pulled from dark terror”
Harvey Kubernick journalist and LA resident 1966.

“ I went to the very first London Fog gig. I must say I was taken. Jim didn’t have any stage presence and didn’t know what he was doing but that sound. We could hear it was special. At clubs in general hip people had stopped dancing but at The Doors shows we young artists and film students couldn’t help but dance. I remember feeling proud of them. There was really some magic in that music."
Judy Raphael UCLA student and friend of Ray and Dorothy in LA.1966.

“I saw The Doors at the Whisky all summer long in 1966. I was a big fan of Van Morrison and Them and The Doors opened when they came to the Whisky. Love had always been my favourite LA band and I thought The Doors were very strange. But their sound grabbed me. They were covering Gloria and playing Moonlight Drive and it was a whole new sound.”
Paul Body saw the rise of The Doors on the Sunset Strip in 1966.

“I went to see Them at the Whisky and opening were The Doors. Ray denies it but I swear they were billed as The Swinging Doors. I thought Ray looked like John Sebastian and I remember talking to him in the Whisky bathroom. I thought he was a real nice guy but I hated the band. I really didn’t like watching Morrison drape himself over the microphone. I got pissed off and went to Elmer Valentine ,the owner, and said ‘hey, I’ve got a band better than this –can we get a job here’”.
Chris Darrow of fellow Sunset Strip act Kaleidescope.

"I used to show slides at the Whisky on a couple of screens. Not so much a light show just a colourful close up of everyday objects. I had a picture of a flaming toilet – someone had poured lighter fuel in a motel toilet and I got a great shot of it. It was mixed in my slides at random but I remember it came up right as The Doors started playing ‘Light My Fire’. That’s the way it seemed back then – things would just fall into place very nicely."
Henry Diltz –Doors photographer.

“ A friend and I drove by the Whisky and saw Jim literally
sitting in the gutter all by himself. We were on our way
to a party at Eric Burdon’s house so we picked him
up. On the way there he was leaning out of the car
and I kept trying to pull him back. He was yelling
and I thought he was going to fall out. We got a
little concerned at showing up at Eric’s house with Jim
but it turned out to be a wild party and Jim fit
right in”
Rodney Bingenheimer LA DJ 1966

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

From Oblivion to Omnipotence.

"When I was a kid I couldn’t even get a date let alone get laid. I was a virgin until I had a hit record. God bless ‘Light My Fire’.
Jim Morrison 1970.

“How we got into the London Fog was we went down to
the audition with about 40 or 50 of our friends to
pack the place out because it wasn’t very big about
15ft by 40ft. they applauded wildly and Jesse James
the owner thought ‘My God!’ and hired us.
Next night the place was kinda empty.”
John Densmore.

“I just missed Ray & Jim at UCLA but the stories
were still fresh. When ‘Break On Through’ came out I
saw them play at the Valley Music Centre on a bill
with Buffalo Springfield. Then I caught them at the
Shrine Auditorium with Iron Butterfly. I got very close
to the stage to take photos and Jim fell off near
me. I remember he didn’t smell too good. His leathers
smelt a little rank but it was a great show. A typical
Doors show”
Heather Harris arts editor of the UCLA Bruin.

“They were rock stars but they were never a rock n roll
band. The music was Kurt Weill meets Chess records.
They were the first EVIL band just like the Beatles were the first long hair band”
Kim Fowley songwriter and denizen of the Sunset Strip.

“A large part of what Jim was about was he provoked you to the point that your natural defence mechanism came into play. The moment he made somebody scream and yell and jump up and down he’d laugh hysterically because he’d won”
Bill Siddons Doors manager.

"I was hanging out on the Strip one day when Jim came up to me. I knew who he was but we hadn’t met yet. I was eating a moonpie and he just strolled up and said ‘hey Rodney give me a bit of that pie’. He was a friendly and very nice guy. We talked about moonpies and that led us into talking about Elvis. He was a huge Elvis fan and from then on we’d talk about Elvis every time we ran into each other”
Rodney Bingenheimer LA DJ and scenester.

“It was seeing The Doors live that gave us the idea
of developing our overall sound, Roadhouse Blues
remains an integral part of the Quo set which says a
great deal about the bands continuing importance some
20 years later”
Rick Parfitt guitar player with Status Quo.

"The Doors were LA sex music. I was
probably over influenced by Jim’s decadence and drinking. I turned it into my own style of decadence and
projected it onstage. I dedicated ‘Deperado on my Killer
album to Jim”
Alice Cooper former Morrison drinking buddy.

“I hated ‘em. I thought they were incredibly boring.
Then again any band with no bass player is boring to
me. They should have been called The Bores”
John Entwistle bas player of The Who.

“It’s very uplifting music. I rediscovered The Doors at a party when I was 19. It was 4am and I was lying on the floor in a drunken stupor when ‘Riders On The Storm’ came on. It moved me, recalled all sorts of memories and I went straight out and bought LA Woman. It inspired a whole direction in my music and The Doors are my favourite all time ever group”
Simon Le Bon singer with Duran Duran.

“In Inspiral Land The Doors will always be open”
Clint Boon, Inspiral Carpets.

“The Doors have probably written two of the best pop songs ever and are the only 60’s band that are completely current now. They were and are still a big influence on me”
Craig Walker guitarist and vocalist with Irish rockers
The Power Of Dreams

“Musically the band were a great influence but personally none whatsoever. Jim Morrison was a beautiful asshole”
Jean-Jaques Burnel of The Stranglers.

“We have fun, the cops have
fun, the kids have fun. It’s a weird triangle”
Jim Morrison

"I had been friendly with Jim at UCLA, and we talked about rock 'n' roll even then. After we graduated, he (Jim) said he was going to New York. Then, two months later, in July, I met him on the beach in Venice. He said he had been writing some songs, so we sat on the beach and I asked him to sing some of them. He did, and the first thing he tried was 'Moonlight Drive'. When he sang those first lines - 'Let's swim to the moon/Lets climb through the tide/Penetrate the evening/That city sleeps to hide' - I said: 'That's it.' I'd never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before. We talked a while before we decided to get a group together and make a million dollars."
Ray Manzarek


"So Ray finally did call me and I went down to his
parents' garage in Manhattan Beach, although he lived in Venice. There wasn't any music. It was just Jim's words. Ray said, 'This is Jim, the singer.' He had never
sung. But they showed me some of the lyrics and I was
attracted to them. Songs like 'Moonlight Drive' and 'Soul
Kitchen' were real out there, yet I could see the fluidity
and rhythm to them and right away thought, 'God, put
this to rock music? Yeah! . . . I'll rehearse for a
while and see what happens."
John Densmore

"One day late in '65, I came back from lunch and there
were these guys waiting for me. It was them, The
Doors. They had a quality that attracted me to them
immediately. I guess they appealed to the snob in me because they were UCLA graduates and I thought, 'Great, here are some intellectual types getting involved with rock 'n' roll.' They played me an acetate of several songs they'd recorded. The music was so raw, so basic, so simplistic, so unlike anything I was familiar with. It intrigued me that they could combine this sort of music with such interesting lyrics."
Billy James Elektra A&R man then with Columbia....

"The Doors weren't very good then. . . The other bands didn't think a whole lot of them. Jimmy's antics were considered extreme even then. Nobody quite understood what he was up to or why he had to be so brazen at times. I know that he hated to
sing. He didn't think he was any good and didn't like
performing. There was always a part of him that was
self-critical and questioning. As though he felt he was being a sham. It wasn't so much that he would rather do something else. It was as if he was very unhappy inside. It made him so nervous he had to get totally looped. . . I used to wonder what was holding him up."
Mirandi Babitz

"We'd all hang out after hours at Canter's Deli on Fairfax. Every freak in town and every band in town. All Zappa's people and all the Doors. All the Byrds, Arthur Lee with his scarves, Buffalo Springfield, the Daily Flash, Sons of Adam. We'd exchange acid, stories, girlfriends and sandwiches. Morrison stood out because he was incredibly handsome and, if he wanted to, he could get very loud. Everybody attracted a different kind of hanger-on, and even then Jim was already attracting the budding litle dark poets and little lost waifs."
Jimmy Greenspoon, keyboardist for Three Dog Night

"The word was out on the street that everyone had to see this lead singer because there had never been anything like him . . . with the unnatural grace of someone out of control . . .
He looked like a Greek god gone wrong, with masses
of dark brown curls and a face that sweaty dreams
are made of . . . It was really mind-boggling. There
was no modern sexy American icon at that time and he
instantly became that for me and all the girls I knew and
we never missed them. I saw The Doors play a hundred
times."
Pamela Des Barres

"We didn't start out with such big ideas. We thought we were going to be just another pop group, but then something happened when we recorded 'The End'. We saw that what we were doing was more important than just a hit song. We were writing serious music and performing it in a very dramatic way. 'The End' is like going to see a movie when you already know the plot. It's a timeless piece of material . . . It was then that we realized we were different from other groups. We were playing music that would last for years, not weeks."
Jim Morrison

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"He sauntered over to me from the bar, and I thought
to myself, if this guy can recite the phone book
he's going to sell a million records . . . He was
gorgeous, magnetic . . . whenever he was introduced to
journalists or record company people . . . and they had their wives with them, he would always try and conquer the wife first. And he usually did."
Steve Harris,Vice Pres. Elektra, on his first meeting with Jim at The Ondine

"We never found a bass guitarist we wanted to work with. The bass players invariably played too much. No bass player would want to play the way we wanted which was sparse and hypnotic. Then one day we were auditioning at some place - we didn't get the gig of course because we were too weird - but the
house band there had an instrument called a Fender
Rhodes piano bass sitting on top of a Vox Continental
organ just like I had. I switched on the amplifier,
played the thing, and realized it was a keyboard bass.
When I saw that I said 'This is it. We have found our
bass player!' "
Ray Manzarek

"The group was promoted modestly but enthusiastically. The BOT film was to be in places where The Doors couldn't appear to promote themselves. Primarily, it was for television. But it was getting their name out that was important then."
Danny Fields, Elektra promotions

"The first album was like number ninety, and that was
about all it was gonna be, and then came 'Light My
Fire' and it went whee up to number one! . . . It
happened so fast that we were still playing The Scene when the song hit the Top Ten. We could have been playing giant places and here we were stuck at The Scene making twenty bucks a night."
Robby Krieger

"Ronnie Krieger and I were both going to college in San Diego and he kept saying I should see his brother's band. Finally, I said I'd go with him to see them at Ciro's. Ronnie picked me up and said we'd have to stop off in Laurel Canyon and pick up the lead singer. When we got to the house, Ronnie said, 'Be kind of quiet, he
doesn't like a lot of confusion or talk.' I said, 'Okay,
fine.' So we picked Jim up and outside of the
introductions I don't think anything was said for like twenty minutes. We dropped him off outside and then went in and plopped ourselves down in front of the stage. About twenty minutes later the band came out to play and what shocked me was that this quiet, mild-mannered, very unassuming guy was a madman onstage. It was a great show and the music and everything just grabbed me. From that
point on I became a huge fan."
Rich Linnell Doors roadie and later concert promoter

"We rehearsed every day for eight months about and then we got our first gig and then, four months after that, we got a record contract."
John Densmore

"I saw a billboard and decided it was a good idea. Arthur Lee claims that I stole the idea from him which is not true. . .I had a feeling about the group. But here's the story of the record release delay [The Doors]. When the record was finished
and mastered, which was October 1966, I had told them
that we'd release the record in November. I began to
get cold feet because I was worried about certain
records that were coming out toward the end of the year that might take away from the impact I wanted The
Doors to make, and also Christmas records had a longer
season than they do now. So I was concerned about that. And also the boys wanted it out. I sat down with them and said, "Look guys, let's come out in January.
January 4th when nobody's going to come out with a
record. I won't release any other album that month so you have a clear shot."And that's what we did. That was an immensely important decision and concession on their part."
Jac Holzman

"I never did any singing.I never even conceived it.I thought I was going to be a writer or a sociologist,maybe write plays.I never went to concerts - one or two at the most.I saw a few things on TV,but I'd never been a part of it all.But I heard in my head a whole concert situation,with a band and singing and an audience:a large audience.Those first five or six songs I wrote,I was just taking notes at a fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head.And once I had written the songs,I just had to sing them."
Jim Morrison

"Ronnie Krieger and I had been going to most of the dates around L.A. and helping out with the equipment because the band didn't have anyone doing it. We were going to go up to San Francisco for the weekend and take the equipment in the van. Well, at the last minute my girlfriend canceled, so I called my good friend Bill Siddons. I told him they'd pay for everything but we had to carry their equipment. Once we got there Ronnie and I would each take one end of an amp and carry it upstairs, but Bill was a lot more energetic. He'd grab an amp in each hand and hustle them upstairs. This impressed the guys, particularly Robby who was in charge of the equipment stuff 'cause he had the more technical mind. So he gave Bill a job."
Rich Linnell

"If it hadn't been for Jac Holzman and Elektra Records, a New York outfit, we wouldn't have recorded. If it hadn't been for the media, the publicity we got in New York, the press and everybody, the radio, and the fans all behind us, there wouldn't be any Doors today."
Ray Manzarek

"You go back to 1965-66, we had nothing. It was just two guys, a singer and a keyboard player. A songwriter/poet and a keyboard player. Then getting the other two guys, a drummer and a guitar player, John Densmore and Robbie Krieger, and just knocking on doors, going around the town, trying to get people to listen to us and were flat broke."
Ray Manzarek

"In the early days, what we stood for is just like the punks--you know, earrings and
shave your head, shock, confront. Well, long hair was
that. They [society at large] thought we were all gay.
The '60s did feel like we could change things, and on
the surface it didn't happen, but I hope that a few
things did seep through. There was a feeling of hope in
the '60s, and if you missed that, then it's sort of
bleak. But I think that the punk movement is a reaction
to the hippie movement, which started out good and
then got too drugged out. A lot of people died and a
lot of people got into, 'Well, let's smoke a joint
and not confront our problems;' and the punk thing is
real confrontive."
John Densmore 1984

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"The best songs come unasked for. You don't have to think about them . Summer is good for songs. When it's real warm, if you have a sense of freedom, not a lot on your mind, and a feeling there's plenty of time, it just
seems to be a good climate for music."
Jim Morrison

"Ray and Jim were at UCLA film school. I
was at UCLA also. John was at Valley State. He and I
and Ray happened to be in this meditation class
together. Ray had a group with his brothers called Rick & The Ravens. Jim was going to sing them but they
didn’t get along very well. Ray and Jim decided to form
the Doors. Pretty quick, they got a hold of John and
myself. That is how it started. From the first rehearsal
I realised we had something unique but I don’t think we really realized how unique we were until we played at the Whiskey. The crowd went nuts. That was the place to play in those days. It was the hot spot in LA."
Robby Krieger

"I didn't get The Doors when I first saw them. I kept going back and back and back. The reason I saw them at all was because of Arthur Lee. Arthur Lee was the top
half of the bill and The Doors were the bottom half.
Arthur said to me, "You've got to stay around to see
this band." I had come from New York on an airplane to
see Arthur, it was 2 o'clock in the morning metabolism-time and I stayed around and was very tired. But I
also felt I hadn't given the group a shot and I had a
high regard for Arthur's opinion; though he was flaky
in many respects I thought he was a talent and still
do. Because I'd been so tired I went back the next
night. It was on the third night that I began to hear
some of the classical influence in the material. I
also was struck by the simplicity of it. In
architectural terms it reminded me of the Bauhaus period-very lean, clean, straight lines-there was nobody on stage who didn't belong on stage. I was impressed how John understood how his job was not to provide a rhythmic underpinning only, but to provide that as well as to follow Jim because everybody really followed Jim-whatever he was going to do was where they went. Finally, about the fourth night I got it. Jim was not moving at all, but I understood that this was a coiled spring ready to burst forth. I just went on a gut feeling. The Doors had recently been signed to Columbia but not
recorded by them. I don't think they were too happy with record companies at the time. I just pursued them all summer long. When I wasn't in town, my wife at the time, Nina, would cook them dinner. I just went after and after and after them like a dog with somebody's trouser cuff in its teeth. I just don't give up when I decide I'm going to do something."
Jac Holzman

“That's why the Doors worked, because none of that shit went on. There were no egos or that type of bullshit. It never entered my mind to think, "Hey, isn't it a bit presumptuous to ask Jim Morrison to sing my
song?" I never thought of it that way. And he didn't
either, which is amazing. Imagine going up to Bob Dylan
and saying, "Hey, Bob, want to sing my song?" Jim was
adamant about it being "The Doors," not "Jim Morrison and the Doors." And I think that was a big reason for our success.”<br>Robby Krieger

"The Doors have always had history on their minds. Nothing was put out for sake of making a buck. Even when we played The Whisky we believed we were going to take over the country, turn it around and make the perfect society"
Ray Manzarek 1980.

"Actually, I think the music came to my mind first and then I made up the words to hang onto the melody, some kind of sound. I could hear it, and since I had no way of writing it down musically, the only way I could
remember it was to try and get words to put to it. And a
lot of times I would end up with just the words and
couldn't remember the melody."
Jim Morrison

"Of the group, John was probably the most "curmudgeon-est" but he had a very firm sense of
what he wanted to do. I think John was in love and out
of love with the group. There were moments when he
wished the whole thing would go away and moments when he was happy to be part of it. Robby was a surfer dude. And he surfed whatever the wave of The Doors was. The thinking one in terms of conceptualizing and taking it all some place was Ray. He had a sense from the very beginning of what it was that they had, of who Morrison was, of how to put it together, and I think he was a very special kind of glue that held it together. Every time Jim would go off on a 'tear' it was Ray who made the band continue to happen."
Jac Holzman

"While stumbling through a song he let out a
deep-throated roar, a bloodcurdling scream, really, and it startled me, as though someone had snapped a wet towel against my bare skin . . . Pam kept telling me I was seeing him at far from his best. I replied that he was a good guy, but he should keep his day job."
Morrison's friend Tom Baker's first impression of The Doors at Gazarri's.

"I felt that we were the ones who stopped the Vietnam war. A reflection of what everyone was trying to say. We were trying to express what was going on. Wake Up! Listen!"
John Densmore 1977

“This group is so serious. It’s the most serious group that ever was or that ever will be.”<br>Robby Krieger 1967.

“I can just look at Ray and know when I’ve gone too far"
Jim Morrison 1969.

"Our music has to do with operating in the dark areas within yourself. There's a black evil side as well as a white love side and what we are trying to do is to come to grips with that and realise that.
Sensual is probably the word that fits best."
Ray Manzarek LA 1968.

"The songs for the first album were written by all four of us. Ray wrote the introduction to "Light My Fire", but the lyrics for most songs were Jim's. The music was developed by all of us. For the lyrics Jim was a phenomena. He came to our sessions with a piece of paper he had scribbled some lyrics on. He was humming the music to it, and we all started work on the melodies. Especially the rhythm and the solo parts".
Robby Krieger 2000.


“As a guitar player Robbie’s more complex and my
thing is more in a blues vein. Long, basic, rambling
and primitive. It’s just the difference between any
two poets is very great.”<br>Jim Morrison 1969.

"Ray sat at his electric organ, head bowed, just looking at the keys. John made a last-minute adjustment on his snare drum, and Robbie, looking like Robert Mitchum's electric son, twisted dials on his amp and tuned softly. Finally, after an unbearable wait, Robbie began, then John, and finally Ray. The introduction over and over, evolving, complex, swelling.
Kaleidoscope was sold out.
Ciro's was packed and all the people in the Western Hemisphere were wedged around the stage, waiting, craning around anxiously, recognizing the introduction. And there he was; a gaunt, hollow Ariel from hell, stumbling in slow motion through the drums. Robbie turned to look with mild disgust but Jim Morrison was oblivious. Drifting, still you could have lit matches off the look he gave the audience. There was a mild tremor of excited disbelief as he dreamed that he went to his microphone. Morrison's clothes looked like he had slept in them since he was twelve and he just hung there on the microphone, slack. Just for a flash, his beautiful child's face said it was all a lie. All the terror, all the drugs, all the evil. Gone! The unhuman sound he made into the microphone, turned the carping groupies to stone. And in the tombed silence he began to sing; alternately caressing, screaming, terraced flights of poetry and music, beyond visceral.
For an hour on that Friday night, a modern American
pop group called The Doors got right out on the edge
and stayed there. And because they are great and
because the edge is where artists produce the best, there occured a major black miracle.
Bill Kerby The UCLA
Daily Bruin May 24, 1967

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"Which one is Jim Morrison?" one girl said to another. But he was not on stage, and a drummer and an organist and a guitar player looked impatiently toward a curtained door.
They sat in darkness punctuated by the steady red lights of amplifiers as tall as a man and the glow of a hundred cigarettes dancing in the evening breeze. The curtain on the door hung like velvet one inch thick.
Two hands pierced the slit of the curtain and drew it back sharply as a spotlight racked the stage and exposed a man who sqinted in the brightness. There was applause that he did not care to hear, and the spotlight caught the contempt in the faces of the other musicians as Jim Morrison tentatively fingered the microphone.
He screamed and reeled, throttling the microphone and gazing at a sea of faces. He shouted a strung-out, distorted, and violated stream of word-images which twisted the faces into expressions of shock and yet fascination. He sang, or rather groaned, or talked to himself out loud as the group raced through "Break On Through" to lead off the set. The band and their instruments work together in complete interaction crystallizing the night air with a texture of sound which a person can run his hand over.
But Morrison gets all the attention, with black curls cascading over the upturned collar of a leather jacket worn the way all leather jackets should be: tight, tough, and somehow menacing. Some people have said that Morrison is beautiful, and others have learned the meaning of the word charisma by watching him.
And then there is "Light My Fire", and Morrison's brass and leather voice strokes the lyrics with all the subtlety in which he handles the microphone. The song deserves to be done The Doors' way, with with suggestive intonation and instumentation striving together to produce the incredible erotic pressure of the driving organ-scream climax.
After all, sex is what hard rock is all about. but there is terror in the sexuality of "The End", Morrison's black masterpiece of narrative poetry about a physical and spiritual odyssey which finishes in patricide and incest. Morrison is at his best in this song, doing his own thing while the organist bends low and presses hard on the keys and the guitarist walks unconcernedly in and out of the spotlight. The drummer sweats.
Morrison dislodged the microphone and staggered blindly across the stage as the lyrics and screams which are "The End" poured out of his mouth, malevolent, satanic, electric, and on fire. He stumbled and fell in front of a towering amplifier and sobbed to himself. The guitarist nudged him with the neck of his guitar, and a mouth in the audience said knowingly, "He's stoned." But he wasn't. He sat up on his knees and stretched out his arms in an attitude of worship toward the cold amplifier, the impartial mediator between the virtues and absurdity of a music dependent upon circuits and ohms.
The audience did not know whether to applaud or not. The guitarist unplugged the electric cord which makes his instrument play, the organist stepped off left, the drummer threw his sticks to the ground in contempt and disgust, and Morrison had disappeared through the velvet curtain without a wave or a smile.
The Doors do not cater to the nameless faces beyond the footlights. The group is not kind, and they do not entertain in any traditional sense. They allow other people to witness the manner of their existence and the pain and pleasure inherent in their imaginations.
The audience was scared, and rightly so. The Doors are not pleasant, amusing hippies proffering a grin and a flower; they wield a knife with a cold and terrifying edge. The Doors are closely akin to the national taste for violence, and the power of their music forces each listener to realize what violence is in himself.
Morrison writes nearly all of the Doors' lyrics, and his work does have meaning. There are rock critics in our time, and when they speak of Morrison's lyrics, visions of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Joyce, and Artaud pop out of their critiques. But hard rock was never meant for academicism. There is truth in The Doors' beat which drives home the meaning of their fascination with symbolism, streams of consciousness, cruelty, and the bizarre in whatever form. That's where The Doors are.
John Stickney The Williams College News 1967

The facts are very simple. So simple that they might mislead you into thinking that the young man whose picture you see on this page is- well, a lot like a lot of other young men. But he isn't. His full real name is James Douglas Morrison. He was born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Fla.- which is near Cape Kennedy. Jim is six feet tall and has brown hair and haunting blue-grey eyes. After attending Florida State University, he moved to California, where he studied film-making at UCLA. Fortunately, he was side-tracked into the world of music (which had always held great interest for him) and he soon found himself the lead singer of a group called the Doors.
After almost two years of hard work, the Doors (Jim, Robby Krieger, John Densmore and Ray Manzarek) finally did what every group has to do in order to start their climb to the top- they cut a hit single record. Oddly enough, the hit had been sitting on record store shelves in the Doors Elektra LP for quite a while. One single was lifted from the LP and didn't make it. Then someone came up with the bright idea of releasing the vocal part of Light My Fire as a single record (if you have the LP, you know that the whole Light My Fire band is eight minutes long). Anyway, as they say, the rest is history. Except it really isn't- for Jim Morrison is not like any other pop singer to appear on the scene: past, present or future. One word that can describe him is "total". He is so whole, so complete, so all himself and nobody or nothing else that just meeting him is an unforgettable experience. Hearing him sing and watching him perform- well, that's really magic! I've been lucky enough to have this experience, and I'll try (mind you, try) to describe just a little bit of what it's like to you. So close your eyes, open your mind and take my hand while I try to lead you through "Jim Morrison's magic land". It begins like this:
At first, everything is serene- blue and green. The lights are low and the stage is empty. Slowly, the boys come out and in the dark ness they start to "set up". You can hardly distinguish which is which. After a minimum amount of tuning up, the house lights suddenly go on. Just as they do, there is a fabulous blast of sound. It's the Doors- and they are on and it's unmistakably their music that you hear. Then, seemingly from nowhere, a figure leaps onto the stage. It's him- Jim Morrison! And you feel something you have never felt before. It's like an electric shock that goes all through you. Jim is singing and you realize that it's a combination of him, the way he looks and moves, and his sound that has completely turned you on. His voice is like spirals of flame, and beautiful red and yellow colors seem to fly out of his fingertips.
Come on, baby, light my fire....He is singing it to you and all at once the room around you seems to glow. At first it's warm, then it's hot- like something burning, but it doesn't hurt. You dig it. It's the fire- the fire that Jim is singing about. The fire that he knows all about and now- suddenly- you do too! You are consumed by his vibrant presence and his sensational singing. He is electric. He is magic. He is all afire. And everything that he is, he is giving to you freely and totally!
Then he is gone. The music continues for a while- echoing through your mind- and the room around you, which you think must have been consumed in the blaze that Jim created in you and all about you, slowly comes back into focus. Soon, all is serene again. It's blue. And it's green. And it's serene. But the gigantic talent of Jim Morrison has changed you- and you will never be the same again.
Gloria Stavers 16 Magazine
November 6, 1967

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"I just remember that some of the best musical trips we took were in clubs. There's nothing more fun than to play music to an audience. You can improvise at rehearsals, but it's kind of a dead atmosphere. There's no audience feedback. There's no tension, really, because in a club with a small audience you're free to do
anything. You still feel an obligation to be good, so you
can't get completely loose; there are people watching.
So there is this beautiful tension. There's freedom
and at the same time an obligation to play well. I
can put in a full day's work, go home and take a
shower, change clothes, then play two or three sets at
the Whisky, man, and I love it. The way an athlete
loves to run, to keep in shape."
Jim Morrison

"I came to the club and there was a small crowd, not big. The Doors opened, and I heard one of the worst sets of music I have ever heard in my life. Knowing that the record company always gets to hear the bad sets, and that I had just travelled across the country to hear them, I stayed and heard one of the greatest sets of music I have ever heard in my life!"
Paul Rothchild

“Time would be suspended. Time would actually stop. The only thing that would exist would be the energy, the feeling generated between the audience and the band. That’s what happened at a Doors concert. Jim was in control of those people and they allowed him to take them on a psychic journey…..”<br>Ray Manzarek.1980.

“The only time I really open up is on stage. I feel
spiritual up there. Performing gives me a mask, a place to hide myself where I can reveal myself. I see it more
than performing, going on, doing songs and leaving. I
take everything personally and don’t feel I’ve done a
complete job unless we’ve gotten everybody in the theatre on common ground”<br>Jim Morrison. 1967.

"The LA version of ‘The Cheetah’ opened in March and was based on the nightclub in New York. It is at the late show that Morrison unveiled his tightrope walk where he precariously balances himself as he walks along the edge of the stage. At one point he loses his balance and falls off the eight foot high stage into the
crowd. He continues to do the tightrope walk in other live performances until one journalist sarcastically comments how contrived it looks. Nevertheless Morrison maintains a well deserved reputation for risking life and limb during his dangerous jaunts along the ledges of tall buildings.
‘The Cheetah’ April 9th 1967.
Morrison invents ‘stage diving’. Greg Shaw 1997.


“It was kinda fun but we were in such big halls that
it was hard to get the sound right. I really liked it more when we were on the way up at clubs like the Whisky and in New York. Once we started the ‘concerts’ it was more showtime and I didn’t like that as much”<br>Robby Krieger. 1970.

MASTERS OF ROCK VOL 9
MARIO MAGLIERI - A ROCK 'N' ROLL LEGEND

?:Mario, how did you first get involved with the Whisky A Go Go?
Mario: I knew Elmer Valentine from Chicago. He was a policeman and I was a bailiff. I came out here in 1963. One day
I as at home in Canoga Park, 40 and semi-retired,
and Elmer called, stating, "You gotta help me. I'm
being robbed by the staff that works for me." I said,
"No problem!" I went down there and fired everyone in
the place. And that's how it all started - suddenly I
was a Rock 'n' Roller!
?: Let's talk about some of those years at the Whisky - maybe you can clear up a few classic rumors. For instance, it's been written in several books on The Doors that you threw Jim Morrison out and told him he could never play the Whisky again because of words he sang when he did "The End."
Mario: Never happened. I don't know who started this,
but I never told him he couldn't perform, even with
some of the other things he had done. I gave him a
shoe in his butt one time because he wouldn't show up
on time to do his shows. He was f**king one of my
secretaries (I'm not gonna tell you who), and they had a nice thing going, but it made it so the guy wouldn't show up. I want him at nine o'clock, not ten to nine or
ten after nine. Nine o'clock. Outside of that,
nothing ever happened. Jim was a big overgrown kid. He was a good kid; nothing wrong with him.
?:Maybe this will help to finally clear up that rumor;
it's been a legend for a long time.
Mario: Yes, I've heard it over and over. But whoever started it should have come to me and asked me about it. The guy used to party at the Whisky all the time. He used to get so smashed he didn't know where he was. I used to protect him. He was like a little squirrel with drugs and booze - but Jim was never kicked out of the
Whisky.
?: Did Morrison really "expose" himself at the
Whisky?
Mario: Yeah. Right there on stage. But, you know, it was
no big deal. I've seen dicks before, you know what I
mean? Of course, I bawled him out. I remember one time Keith Moon came in when we had Cycle Sluts playing. He went on stage and took all his clothes off and stood there, naked. I said, "What are you doing? Are you crazy or something?!" You know what I mean? I mean, they get screwed up and that is the way it goes.
?:Is it true that The Doors never headlined?
Mario:I don't think The Doors ever headlined the Whisky.It was like this: If you have a Fleetwood Mac in
there for five days, you want a cheap opening act. You
can't spend the money; you don't want to spend the
money. So you wind up getting The Doors for $125 a day to open, and when you put that with the $500 a day that Fleetwood Mac costs you, it only costs you $625 a day. We were just trying to save money. If it wasn't The Doors it would have been Things To
Come.
?: Do you want to add anything, Mario?
Mario:Rock 'n' Roll will be here after I'm gone, and after
you're gone, and after your kids are gone. Rock 'n' roll
will be here forever. It ain't going to change!.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER
2000 - LIVE AT THE WHISKY - RONNIE HARAN, RAY
MANZAREK, JOHN DENSMORE, AND ELMER VALENTINE

The Doors were always different - never
schmoozer-socialites in the John Phillips vein, nor folkies like the other bands had once been. As last as mid-1966, they were still considered something of a loser-outcast band, playing in a seedy dive next door to the Whisky called The London Fog, which came complete with indifferent drunken sailors and a B-grade go-go dancer. "Her name as Rhonda Lane, and she was a little, as the Japanese say, genki - meaning substantial," says Ray Manzarek, the band's keyboardist. Densmore remembers
peering forlornly through the door of the Whisky - which
he couldn't afford to get into - and seeing Love
playing to adulation. "I really wanted to be in Love -
they were making it," he says, "But I was in the demon
Doors."
But they got a break when Ronnie Haran, a
young woman working as Valentine's promotion director,sauntered into The London Fog one evening and liked what she saw. "She saw Jim, and that was it - she was smitten," says Manzarek. "The arrows of Eros went flying and struck her directly in the heart."
"That's bullshit," says Haran, who now goes by the name of Ronnie Haran Mellen. "Jim was too rough-trade for me. I was smitten with the group. The poetry of the
words - I'd never heard lyrics like that." Whatever the
case, Haran Mellen confirms that she launched an
all-out campaign to sway her boss. "Ronnie said, 'You've
gotta put this band in,' and she told her friends to
call and ask for The Doors," says Elmer Valentine, who
admits he was skeptical. "Well, I got so many g**damn
phone calls, so I put them in. The 60's! I couldn't go
wrong. I didn't have to know shit!" Actually, it wasn't
quite that smooth a trip to stardom for Morrison and
company. Though their residency at the Whisky in the
summer of 1966 afforded them a fantastic opportunity to workshop the now famous songs that would form their first album. One night, however, the Doors fierce
experimentalism proved too much to bear even for the indulgent Valentine, and it finished them off as a Whisky band for good. Just three songs into the set, Morrison called for "The End" - way prematurely, since they had about 40 mins of performance time left. As usual, they played a few verses before transitioning into the improvisatory section. The musicians vamped...until Morrison finally spoke up. "The killer awoke before dawn," he said. "He put his boots on...He took a face from the ancient gallery, and he walked on down the hallway..."
It was the lead up to the famous Oedipal climax that
everyone knows from the recorded version of "The End." But that night in 1966, no one had ever heard it before - including the three Doors. Morrion's recitation was so mesmeizingly bizarre that the room fell silent. The band continued to vamp quietly, perplexedly, as Morrison got to the part where he says. "Father?, Yes Son, I want to kill you...." At that point, I realized, My God, he's doing Oedipus Rex! says Manzarek. Sure enough, Morrison, after a dramatic pause, came forth with
Mother...I want to ***k you."
The band instinctively
erupted into a cacophonous frenzy, and the audience broke out in furious free-form dance - proto-moshing. The crowd, evidently, had loved it. But to the
old-fashioned, Runyonesque fellas in Valentine's crew, this was way, way outta line. An appalled, disbelieving
Maglieri summoned Tanzi as the drama unfolded to witness the scene for himself. After the show, says Manzarek, "Phil Tanzi came running up the stairs (to the dressing room) saying, "You filthy mother***kers! You guys have the dirtiest **ckin' mouths I've ever heard in my life...." Tanzi had already called Valentine, who was at home and reported, "You got this Jim Morrison singing
a song about ***king his mother! What are you going
to do?" Valentine responded, "Pull him off the stage
and break his ***kin' legs." "I was serious!" says
Valentine. "I was a redneck ex-policeman from Chicago!
Catholic boy. ***k your mother? That's the worst thing I
could ever..." The Doors were allowed to finish out the
week, but were then sent packing. Though they would
become famous in the following year as their debut album came out, they never played the Whisky
again.Ironically, though, Valentine and Morrison subsquently struck up a friendship. As the fame got to Morrison and he began to self-destruct, he used Valentine's house as a hideaway when he felt like shirking his responsibilities.
"He had four or five guys like me, people he'd hide
out with," says Valentine. "He couldn't handle being
that big." Valentine tried to get the singer into
acting - (1969) - his buddy Steve McQueen was involved
in the production of a picture called "Adam at 6am",
about being a young college professor and maybe
Morrison could star in it. He persuaded Morrison to cut
his hair and shave the beard he had grown, the better
to impress McQueen's co-producers at a lunch
meeting, but it was to no avail. Michael Douglas got the
part.

Vanity Fair
Magazine November 2000

"If velvet came an inch deep, if endless bites of baklava never began
to cloy, they'd arouse sensations like those that invade you when you
listen to The Doors. You mingle in the sweet, rich sensuousness of
the music; the music mingles in you. Listeners close their eyes and
smile beatifically. It is as if The Doors play on some secret
frequency that directly affects the smile center of the brain.
iiiiiiiiiiThe Doors are four: organist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby
Krieger, drummer John Densmore, and singer Jim Morrison. They say
they aren't more because four people trying to get together is
enough. But because they are only four, "everybody has to play much
more music," says Robby. "The organ is not just a fill-in instrument
like in other groups." And there is no one who just plays plunkey-
plunk in the background.
iiiiiiiiiiThe Doors also have no leader. "We're a communist group,"
says Ray. "No, an anarchist group," says Robby. Each contributes
equally and richly. Each note has meaning, there is not a decibel of
irrelevant noise. None of the noise that only shatters.
iiiiiiiiii"We've all shattered ourselves a long time ago," says
Ray. "That was what early rock was about—an attempt to shatter 2,000
years of culture . . . now we're working on what happens after you've
shattered . . ."
"Teen Talk" by Susan Szekely,
New York Post, April 7, 1967.

"The Doors, a quartet who have been playing in the Los Angeles area
for some time, have come up with their first album, which is named
after them.
This Elektra album has a strange, new sound, but it is not strange in
the fascinating directions pursued by the Rolling Stones, Dylan,
Donovan or the Beatles.
Jim Morrison, lead vocalist, has a voice similar to that of Eric
Burdon, the Animals' singer, but he is somewhat overmannered, murky,
and dull.
The best example of his faults is "The End," an eleven-minute thirty-
five second exploration of how bored he can sound as he recites
singularly simple, overelaborated psychedelic non sequiturs and
fallacies.
Many of the numbers drag and there is an abundance of banal lyrics,
but The Doors do sound fairly good on "Break on Through," their
current single, "Twentieth Century Fox," and "Alabama Song," which
has a good rhythm backing and passable harmony."
"Doors Open Up," by Pete Johnson,
Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1967.

"If the Stones offer the experience of a great and established group
performing up to complete expectations, a new group, The Doors,
bursts into quick and deserved prominence like a sudden, unexpected
bolt of lightning. The Doors (Elektra), superbly produced by Paul A.
Rothchild, is a record which balances a lot of seeming paradoxes:
expert, controlled, and precise in attack, the group nonetheless
excels in performances which grow from pregnant understatement to
exhilarating incandescence in a matter of seconds.
Judging from their premier effort, The Doors are the new group by
which all other new groups must, for a time at least, be measured."
"The New Group" by Paul Nelson, Hullabaloo, May 1967.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

PETE TOWNSEND INTERVIEW
by Paul Nelson - Hullabaloo November 1968

Q: Who or what don't you like in rock?
Pete:Actually, I don't dislike anyone. I really can't. At
certain times, you know, I dislike certain people.
Sometimes, I don't like Vanilla Fudge ( a group with whom
the Who has just done a few concerts) but then, at
other times I think they are fantastic. Do you know
what I mean? They're a schizophrenic group anyway, so
it's very easy to be schizophrenic about them. But I
think that mainly I've got a very wide musicial ear and
that I can like anyone. There's no music that really
makes me angry, but there is music that scares me. And
if music scares me, then I don't like it.
Q: What about the Doors? Would you-
Pete: Don't go crazy over them, actually.
Q: Would you consider them to
be a group capable of scaring someone?
Pete: No.They don't scare me. I'll tell you one thing about them. I've said a fantastic amount about them in lots and lots of interviews and yet I've only ever heard
like three of their records. I've not heard their
albums - I have heard their albums but I didn't really
listen to them very well - and I've only seen them once
on stage about a year ago, and yet I've been able to
go into great length about what they mean. I've
talked about the fact that they're very unlinked as
people, that the singer is one of the biggest sex symbols of the moment, that the group is building lots of
things so that the little girls are going crazy about
that guy, Morrison. Also, because of their remoteness
from the audience, they appear to have a kind of unity
that isn't really there.
Q: I think that they started very well. But this whole image thing has gotten out of hand. I don't know, I don't particuarly like to see them anymore and I did like them very much at one time.
Pete: They're going to be very big,though, I feel.
Q: Have they played England
yet?
Pete: They won't be big in England. English people
don't like American groups. For the next year, I think
alot of American groups might go to England and fall
on hard ears. At the end of that time, it will be
all right.

Signing the Doors and Recording Their First Historic Album

JAC HOLZMAN: In May of 1966 I had flown to LA and was picked up at the airport by Ronnie Haran in her white convertible. Arthur Lee was playing the Whisky and expected me to drop by. It was 11pm LA time, 2am New York metabolism time. I was beat, but I went. Arthur urged me to stick around for the next band. Whoever they were, Arthur had a high opinion of them, and I had a very high opinion of Arthur's opinion, so I stayed.

It was the Doors, and they did nothing for me. There was another group that played the Whisky that I had fallen in love with and tried desperately to sign, Buffalo Springfield, but Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic was far more convincing. We were a smaller label without Atlantic's amazing track record of hit singles. Love had gotten my foot in the rock door, and now I needed a second group to give Elektra more of that kind of credibility, but the Doors weren't showing it to me.

Jim was lovely to look at, but there was no command. Perhaps I was thinking too conventionally, but their music had none of the rococo ornamentation with which a lot of rock and roll was being embellished-remember, this was still the era of the Beatles and "Revolver," circa 1966. Yet, some inner voice whispered that there was more to them than I was seeing or hearing, so I kept returning to the club.

Finally, the fourth evening, I heard them. Jim generated an enormous tension with his performance, like a black hole, sucking the energy of the room into himself. The bass line was Ray Manzarek playing a second keyboard, piano bass, an unusual sound, very cadenced and clean. On top of Ray, Robby Krieger laid shimmering guitar. And John Densmore was the best drummer imaginable for Jim-whatever Morrison did Densmore could follow, with his jazz drummer's improvisational skill and sensitivity. They weren't consistent and they needed some fine tuning before they would be ready to record, but this was no ordinary rock and roll band.

In my folk days, I would mike voices and instruments very close up, and the records sounded fat and full, the voice popping out, right in front of your living room speakers. I thought that with equivalent miking and proper stereo spacing we could make a virtue of the group's sparseness. Kurt Weill's 'Alabama Song' was a surprise coming from a rock band, and their arrangement impressed me. And when I heard, really heard, Manzarek's baroque organ line under 'Light My Fire,' I was ready to sign them.

RAY MANZAREK: Someone said, "The president of Elektra Records is here to see you and he wants to talk to you about a recording contract." All right! We just started jumping up and down. Elektra was a very hip label from New York. We were very impressed with the roster.

ROBBY KRIEGER: Koerner, Ray & Glover being on Elektra-when I was in high school they were my idols, that band and that label. To be on Elektra was the greatest thing.

RAY MANZAREK: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was on Elektra. Jac had Love. The Doors wanted nothing more than to be as big as Love. We thought it was absolutely marvelous that Elektra was a folk label that had gone electric and were now interested in the psychedelic Doors.
Fortunately that night we had played 'Alabama Song.' I think that pushed it over the edge-Jac said, "Aha! Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht. These Doors are not just California pretty boys, they actually have some brains." Finally, somebody's hip enough to understand what we're doing. And then up to the dressing room came this tall, distinguished-looking gentleman.

JOHN DENSMORE: He seemed a little strange, with those glasses. But kinda hip. Hearing how he started with a motor scooter and a tape recorder and recorded folk groups-we loved it. An incredible entrepreneur.

RAY MANZAREK: He talked in his very officious and very correct manner, and we thought, "Jesus, this guy is not only hip, he's smart too." Because, frankly, the people we'd met in the record business in Los Angeles were a little less than brilliant, a little less than bright. He was a bit pompous, but why not? The man was standing six-three and had a good brain in his head, had a good carriage and a good delivery. I was, frankly, very impressed with him. I thought, "This is going to be real, real good." On the other hand, when he offered us the money and the points-absolutely minuscule. $2,500 front money-oh. Five percent-heinous. And he keeps all the publishing-yiyiyiyi! Jesus, he sure drives a hard bargain! This was like a Brill Building deal.

JAC: Here are the facts. I offered what was slightly on the generous side of a standard deal in 1966 for an unproven group. Elektra would advance all recording costs plus $5,000 cash to the band against a five percent royalty with a separate advance against publishing, of which the Doors would own seventy-five percent and we would own twenty-five. And as a show of faith, I committed to release three albums. If the first album did less than well, the Doors wouldn't be out on the street, another disheartened and discarded LA band.

BILLY JAMES: Ray came up to my house to have me tell him what I knew about Elektra. I told him in confidence that Jac had asked me to come work at Elektra, that my job was to establish a presence on the West Coast, in LA, and I could think of no better group to support than the Doors. By all means sign with Elektra-I thought it was a terrific idea.

RAY MANZAREK: Jac wasn't offering much money. But a guarantee to record and release three albums-that was fabulous. We could create anything we wanted to, and Elektra would put it out. We had material for two albums. So we knew that all the songs we had would be recorded, and the records would be in record stores, and we also had the option of doing another record on top of that. So we felt incredibly secure.
Jac was fabulous that way: "We're signing you, because we want you to be creative." In effect, Jac Holzman to the Doors was like Diaghilev to Nijinsky and Stravinsky.
It had all gotten rather anticlimactic at the Whisky because we had gotten our recording contract. That was the important thing, to make records.

From the book "Follow the Music," the story of Elektra records as told by its founder, Jac Holzman.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"just enjoy the music ... put the records on ... smoke a joint ...turn the lights down ... eh ... Put the record on ... Listen to our music. Listen to Jim's words. Don't forget the words."
Ray Manzarek Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1983.

"It's a search, an opening of one door after another.
Our work, our performing is a striving for
metamorphosis. Right now we're more interested in the dark side of life, the evil thing, the night time. But through our music we're striving to break through to a
cleaner freer realm. Our music and personalities are
still in a state of chaos and disorder with maybe an
element of purity just showing. Lately when we've
appeared in concert it's started to merge.."
Jim Morrrison 1968

"people came to see Jim Morrison The Acid King, The Lizard King. Lets go see a geek. The guys stoned all the
time and he puts on a helluva show.Well he did put
on a helluva show but it wasn't because he was
stoned. It was a freak show in the shamanistic sense, the sense of possesion, the sense of participating with thepowers of the universe that Jim was capable of
doing. The people who came to the early Doors shows came to see that."
Ray Manzarek 1980.

"Listening to Strange Days is like watching Fellini's Satyricon. Morrison's words are so cinematic that each song begins to form pictures in the mind. More than any other American songwriter he had this quality. Like the film, Strange Days builds it's story line through the images and characters in a series of vignettes. And the
whole becomes more and more visible the deeper one gets int the film and/or the album. Because Strange Days has been set up that way."
Eric Van Lustbader Circus Magazine 1971

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

”we wouldn't have recorded. If it hadn't been for the
media, the publicity we got in New York, the press and
everybody, the radio, and the fans all behind us, there
wouldn't be any Doors today."
Ray Manzarek

Martin Pitts Inverview With Ray Manzarek of the Doors

MP: How did you and Jim Morrison decide to form a band?
RM: We graduated from the UCLA Film School in the summer of 1965. Jim was going to go to New York City, and I was going to stay in L.A. I was sitting on a beach in Venice a month or two after graduation, in the middle of July, thinking, What am I going to do? I've got a masters degree in film, big deal. I don't know anybody in film-- I don't have any relatives in Hollywood. How am I going to get a job making movies? So I'm sitting on the beach looking up at the sun--a beautiful day. And I open my eyes and walking along the shore break, maybe 10-15 yards away, was a guy I recognized--sort of. And I thought, Who? My God, that's Jim Morrison. And I said, "Hey, Jim, Hey Morrison, come over here."

And Jim came from the water with the sun behind him, and I watched the figure with the light spilling around him. It was getting to be about four o'clock, and the light was shimmering around Jim Morrison. And he came up to me, and he looked fabulous. He'd lost thirty pounds--he was a little on the chubby side at UCLA. He looked hard and lean and his hair was grown out.

And I said, "Man, you look great. What have you been doing?"

He said, "Nothing."

"I thought you were going to New York?" He said, "No, I decided to stay here." "What have you been up to?" And he said: "I've been writing songs..." I said, "Whoa, that's interesting, writing songs. Well, sing a song for me. Let me hear one." He knew I was a musician. I knew he was a poet...So he sat down on the beach, and he dug his hands into the sand, and the sand was streaming out.

And he began to sing, "Moonlight Drive" in this really haunting kind of voice. It was soft--a soft, but powerful voice. Almost like Chet Baker used to sing. And when Jim Morrison sang those first words:

"Let's swim to the moon Let's climb through the tide Penetrate the evenin' that the City sleeps to hide...

I thought-- Wow. Those are great lyrics. And he continued the song, and I thought this is one of the best Rock & Roll songs I've ever heard. The lyrics are haunted and psychedelic. They're about life and death and existence and love. As Morrison was singing, I could hear the things that I could play behind it. Just funky kind of. It was a funky song.

And I said, "'Moonlight Drive.' That's fabulous, man. Do you have any other songs?"
And he said, "Yeah, I've got a couple more." And he started to sing a few more songs. I can't recall exactly which ones they were. But they were brilliant. Just Jim's singing and hearing what I could play behind them.
I said, "Wow, hey, let's get a rock and roll band together."
And he said, "That's exactly what I want to do."
And I said, "Fabulous man. Do you have a name for the band?
"Yeah," he told me.
And I said, "Well, what is it?"
And he said, "the Doors."
Martin Pitts
American Legends 1991

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"On a Tuesday morning in June, I hurried up the driveway to Ray's Ocean Park garage apartment, where Jim was staying. I paused on the landing at the top of the stairs and looked out over the palm trees and Victorian rooftops of Venice.

Mom and Dad had stopped the rent on my Topanga pad after I had dropped most of my classes, so it was back living at home again. I kept the brown shutters closed most of the time in my old bedroom, which now had an inch-thick foam rubber pad under imitation Oriental rugs. On a tabletop I had a shrine that consisted of pictures of Maharishi, Autobiography of a Yogi author Paramahansa Yogananda, and Krishna. Candles burned continuously. I slipped in and out of the back door at all hours of the day or night. If hunger knocked, I raided the fridge or tolerated the bad vibes at the dinner table. I had a secret world and my parents' homemaking routine seemed mundane compared to what I saw in Topanga Canyon.

Now, why can't I get out from under their wing and get a place like Ray's? Westwood is so lame. Sneaking up to the Mormon Temple at midnight for my meditation walks is the only cool thing to do. If I lived in Venice I could hang out with Jim. He's fascinating; he questions everything. Hell, Ray's place is only seventy-five dollars a month for a two-room Victorian with an ocean view.

Venice, man . . . This ain't no surfer territory. This is beatnik vibes with artists and musicians.

Groovy.

"Listen to this," Jim said as he let me in. His hair was still wet from the shower, and he ran his hands through it affectedly while leading me into the apartment. The lion's mane fell perfectly into place.

"How do you get your hair to go like that?" I asked him as he hustled over to the stereo.

"Wash it and don't comb it," he replied, putting Ray's John Lee Hooker album on. He was already on his way to looking like a rock star. I hadn't seen him for a few weeks and there had been a change in him. Was he posing?

The blues filled the room. Jim walked over to the window and opened it. The sun spilled in. We both marveled at the ocean view.

"Play 'Crawling King Snake,' " I demanded. "I love the groove on 'Crawling King Snake.' When we're on about our second or third album, I think we should record that. After we've done a lot of originals. Of course, we have to get a record deal first."

I was brimming with anticipation about the future. These people - Ray; his girlfriend, Dorothy; Jim; and their film school friends - were independent, creative students, and I wanted to be around them. We had all gone to see Louis Malle's Phantom India at UCLA a couple of weeks back, and Ray and Jim had been talking about the French "new-wave" in cinema.

"You should see 400 Blows, John," Ray had prodded. I knew it was a film by a French director (Truffaut) and the title turned me on. I thought it meant 400 Blow Jobs. Looking around Ray's place, I felt a college buzz and an Oriental flair. Books, film magazines, Oriental rugs, Indian bedspreads, erotic photos. Whole new worlds were opening up to me in this room.

I was twenty, and everything was possible.

"It'll happen," Jim retorted with cool confidence. "Just listen to this guy's pipes, man." His voice was almost reverential. Considering Jim's Southern background, it made sense. He was obsessed with the way black blues singers sounded. The raw feeling of pain expressed in their voices seemed to reverberate in him. He listened intently, lost in his own world.

After several more cuts, Jim suggested Olivia's for lunch.

I jumped to my feet. My mouth watered at the thought of Southern home cookin'. Mashed potatoes and gravy. "Okay, but we shouldn't have dinner there too!" I teased, rubbing my stomach.

"I know, I know. Several meals in a row there and you get the runs. But it reminds me of Florida home cookin'!"

"And it's cheap!" I exclaimed.

Jim curled that slow smile that you could hang on forever."
From Riders On The Storm by John Densmore...

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

May 5, 1966 - London Fog

After substantial prompting on Morrison's part,
the Whisky A Go Go talent agent Ronnie Harran finally
comes to see the Doors perform at the London Fog, and
ends up inviting them to audition at the Whisky the
following Monday. Accounts vary as to the exact sequence of
events, but the Doors are also informed at this time that
the Fog will have to let them go after the weekend's
performances.
Doors On The Road

The very last night of the Doors four months at
the London Fog, Ronnie Haran, the chic chic who books
talent for the Whiskey A Go Go, came in to hear them.
"I knew that Jim Morrison had star quality the minute he
started singing," says Miss Haran. "They needed more
polish, but the sound was there. Unfortunately, none of
them had telephones (Morrison was then sleeping on the beach) and all they could give me was a number where John 'sometimes' could be reached. It took a month to contact them again, but I finally booked them into the Whiskey." Miss Haran also helped The Doors join the musicians' union, get new clothes, and organize the business side of their lives. Her tenacious insistence upon using them as more or less the Whiskey house-band, despite management objections, was the important break The Doors needed.
At the London Fog, they played for
five dollars apiece on weeknights, double on weekends,
seven nights a week, four sets per night. Because at
that time they didn't have sufficient original
material for such a long job, over half their repertory
consisted of blues and rock 'n' roll classics, such as
"Gloria," "Red Rooster," and "Who Do You Love?" A faithful core of fans from the UCLA film school followed them, but on the Strip a cross-section of other listeners
joined.
More than anything else, the London Fog job
provided the opportunity to play together steadily,
experiment with their songs, and to develop as a working group. Jim Morrison in particular changed, progressing from a reserved stage style to his presently
flamboyant manner. Their music was ardently defended by a growing segment of the Strip population; but it also just plain scared a lot of people.
Danny Sugerman

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

1965
Thursday July 8th: Jim and Ray Come Together - Venice Beach, CA
After receiving a Bachelor's degree in cinematography from UCLA and living on friend Dennis Jacob's rooftop, Jim Morrison runs into his fellow film school graduate Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach this afternoon around 1:00 p.m. and the idea of a band is formulated after Jim sings a couple of his songs in this order "Moonlight Drive", "My Eyes Have Seen You" and "Summers Almost Gone"

Let's swim to the moon
Let's climb through the tide
Penetrate the evening
That the city sleeps to hide

Let's swim out tonight, love
It's our turn to try
Parked beside the ocean
On our moonlight drive.


Jim tells Ray he wants to call the band The Doors, with reference to the William Blake line: "If the doors of perception were cleansed man could see things as they truly are, infinite". The idea of using the name is also in association to Aldous Huxley and his book The Doors of Perception which Ray digs as both of them are experimenting with drugs and expanding their consciousness. Huxley's book is primarily about his experiences and accounts of taking mescaline. While staying on the rooftop, Jim would take acid daily, which is legal at this time and available at the local head shop, and rarely come down off the roof while writing constantly and eating very little.

Friday July 9th: Jim moves in with Ray and Dorothy - Ocean Park, CA
Jim moves in with Ray and his girlfriend Dorothy in their small flat on the beach in Ocean Park and sleeps in
Ray and Dorothy's room as they move their mattress into the living room near the heater. Ray begins working on Jim's songs teaching him how to sing during the day while Dorothy is working.

Saturday. July 24th: Ray Introduces Jim to His Band - Ray's Parents House
After staying with Ray for a few weeks Jim is introduced to Ray's band "Rick and The Ravens" who rehearse at Ray's parents. Members include Ray's two brothers Rick and Jim Manzarek. The lyrics Jim sings to the fellas soar over their heads but they agree to work with the new singer and new material.

" R i c k a n d t h e R a v e n s "

Early August
Jim writes lyrics to songs wherever he roams while constantly expanding his mind and his vocal style. Jim is not a great singer at first but he does have a strong desire to get better and with his strong rich voice and good pipes it's only a matter of time. Ray strongly believes in Jim and it is this commitment that gives Jim the confidence he needs to develop into one of the greatest rock singers of all time.

Friday. Aug. 20th: John Densmore - Joins The Doors
John Densmore, while attending college and uncertain of his major, is given a call from Ray Manzarek to come to his parents house to play drums with the band. John and Ray know each other somewhat from a meditation class they both attend regularly.
John is currently working with a band called the "Psychedelic Rangers" with friend Robby Krieger. John meets a shy Jim Morrison and likes the originals more than the covers the band is practicing. He is intrigued by Jim's self-consciousness and provocative mysterious lyrics and after a few rehearsals decides to join the band two weeks prior to cutting a demo.

Thursday. September. 2nd: World Pacific Jazz Studios - Los Angeles, CA
"Rick and the Ravens" have some free studio time coming from a trade off on an Aura Records deal. The Doors (without Robby Krieger) cut a demo which sounds very little like The Doors with a very young sounding Jim Morrison. The six songs on the demo are all Morrison originals. The band immediately begins to locally shop the demos around after the three hour session. Jim is delighted after hearing his voice on a record for the first time.

"Moonlight Drive"
"Hello I Love You"
"Summers Almost Gone"
"My Eyes Have Seen You"
"End of The Night"
"Go Insane (A Little Game)"

Sunday. September. 4th: Jim Writes His Parents (DU)
Around this time, Jim writes his parents in London disclosing his plans to sing with a band. Jim's father, an admiral in the navy, vehemently disagrees with Jim's choice and is very upset with his son. He writes Jim back conveying his objection while mentioning paying for four years of college, Jim abandoning his piano lessons as a child, never caroling with the family, and most importantly mentioning the band will never amount to anything. Jim isn't good at taking criticism and never writes his family again!

Late September: Robby Krieger - Joins The Doors
Uncertain and dissatisfied with the direction of the band Rick and Jim Manzarek decide to quit returning to school. John asks friend Robby Krieger to play guitar with the band. Robby is a talented guitar player who can play many styles including a mean bottleneck that Jim loves immediately and asks him to play on every song they rehearse. Robby likes the feel of the music and continues to play with the band quitting his other band The Clouds and becoming the final member completing the group.
The band moves the equipment out of the Manzarek's and continues rehearsing 5 days a week at Ray's beach house, the garage of friend Hank Olguin behind a Santa Monica Greyhound bus depot in Venice, or Robby's house.
[glow=red,2,300]THE DOORS ARE BORN[/glow]
Doors Interactive History

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"Every night in the summertime it was just one big street scene. Cars lined up bumper to bumper.
We hit all the clubs. The Sea Witch, an underground kind of place. Pandora's Box, The Unicorn, The Trip, The Galaxy which was next to The Whisky, Brave New World, Bido Lito's.
Gazzari's was where the local groups played more or less."
Robby Krieger on Sunset Strip....from Follow The Music

"Out of nowhere popped all these guys and girls with long hair and they just started hanging out. I guess you could describe it as a zoo!"
Bill Gazzari Club owner on the Strip ....from Follow The Music

This is one of my fave tales about the early Doors shows.

"The Doors were boys who kept sitting on the stoop and asking me if they could come in and audition. The one who did the most talking was Jim Morrison. I said 'well Jim you got to wear shoes to come in here'.
So he turned around went back out and sat on the ledge, just joined the hippies as inside The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield and Ike & Tina would play.
And then he'd hit me again a couple of days later. 'We want to audition'.
And I said....'well Jim we can work it out but you gotta wear shoes'.
One day he said 'Bill can we come in now'.
I leaned over the counter and he had one shoe on.
I walked around the counter and I seen that he didn't have a shoe on the other foot.
I said 'did you lose a shoe?'
He said 'no I found one so I could get in'.
Bill Gazzari ....from Follow The Music

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

In The Doors we have both musicians and poets, and both know of each other's art, so we can effect a synthesis.
Robby Krieger

Thursday July 8th 1965 Jim and Ray Come Together - Venice Beach, CA (DU - Some people believe this encounter took place in August, as it is written in many books, but it is highly unlikely due to the first hand account of Ray, as the one that was there, and who has always claimed to remember this event very well and has always said July)

After receiving a Bachelor's degree in cinematography from UCLA and living on friend Dennis Jacob's rooftop, Jim Morrison runs into his fellow film school graduate Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach this afternoon around 1:00 p.m. and the idea of a band is formulated after Jim sings a couple of his songs in this order "Moonlight Drive", "My Eyes Have Seen You" and "Summers Almost Gone"

Let's swim to the moon
Let's climb through the tide
Penetrate the evening
That the city sleeps to hide

Let's swim out tonight, love
It's our turn to try
Parked beside the ocean
On our moonlight drive.

Jim tells Ray he wants to call the band The Doors, with reference to the William Blake line: "If the doors of perception were cleansed man could see things as they truly are, infinite". The idea of using the name is also in association to Aldous Huxley and his book The Doors of Perception which Ray digs as both of them are experimenting with drugs and expanding their consciousness. Huxley's book is primarilly about his experiences and accounts of taking mescaline. While staying on the rooftop, Jim would take acid daily, which is legal at this time and available at the local headshop, and rarely come down off the roof while writing constantly and eating very little.

"I had been friendly with Jim at UCLA, and we talked about rock 'n' roll even then. After we graduated, he (Jim) said he was going to New York. Then, two months later, in July, I met him on the beach in Venice. He said he had been writing some songs, so we sat on the beach and I asked him to sing some of them. He did, and the first thing he tried was 'Moonlight Drive'. When he sang those first lines - 'Let's swim to the moon/Lets climb through the tide/Penetrate the evening/That city sleeps to hide' - I said: 'That's it.' I'd never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before. We talked a while before we decided to get a group together and make a million dollars."
Ray Manzarek

After about two weeks Ray takes Jim to his parents house where the band rehearses and presents Jim to his group "Rick and The Ravens". Members include Ray's two brothers Rick and Jim Manzarek. The lyrics soar over their heads but they agree to work with the new singer and new material. Jim writes lyrics to songs wherever he roams while constantly expanding his mind and his vocal style. Jim is not a great singer at first but he does have a strong desire to get better and with his strong rich voice and good pipes it's only a matter of time. Ray strongly believes in Jim and it is this commitment that gives Jim the confidence he needs to develop into one of the greatest rock singers of all time.

"There was this blond guy with glasses and a Japanese girlfriend. At the end of the session he said he'd heard I was a drummer and asked if I'd like to join a rock 'n' roll band. And then he said a curious thing. He said he'd call me in a few months because the time wasn't right yet. And I thought, 'Gee, that's pretty cosmic. Far out.'"
John Densmore

Friday August 20th John Densmore - Joins The Doors
John Densmore, while attending college and uncertain of his major, is given a call from Ray Manzarek to come to his parents house to play drums with the band. John and Ray know each other somewhat from a mutual meditation class they both attend regularly.
John is currently working with a band called the "Psychedelic Rangers" with friend Robby Krieger. John meets a shy Jim Morrison and likes the originals more than the covers the band is practicing. He is intrigued by Jim's self-consciousness and provocative mysterious lyrics and after a few rehearsals decides to join the band two weeks prior to cutting a demo.

"So Ray finally did call me and I went down to his parents' garage in Manhattan Beach, although he lived in Venice. There wasn't any music. It was just Jim's words. Ray said, 'This is Jim, the singer.' He had never sung. But they showed me some of the lyrics and I was attracted to them. Songs like 'Moonlight Drive' and 'Soul Kitchen' were real out there, yet I could see the fluidity and rhythm to them and right away thought, 'God, put this to rock music? Yeah! . . . I'll rehearse for a while and see what happens."
John Densmore

Jim has no car but the other band members, especially John, regularly run him around to party with his old film school pals Phil O'Leno, Dennis Jacob, and Felix Venable at their apartments. Jim is smoking pot all day and often tripping on LSD while regularly hanging out around the UCLA campus or Venice Beach. He often crashes at the girl of the moment's house or anyone that will have him when he can't make it back to the beach from a long night of partying.

Thursday Sept. 2nd 1965 World Pacific Jazz Studios - Los Angeles, CA
"Rick and the Ravens" have some free studio time coming from a trade off on an Aura Records deal. The Doors (without Robby Krieger) cut a demo which sounds very little like The Doors with a very young sounding Jim Morrison. The six songs on the demo are all Morrison originals:

"Moonlight Drive"
"Hello I Love You"
"Summers Almost Gone"
"My Eyes Have Seen You"
"End of The Night"
"Go Insane (A Little Game)"

The band immediately begins to locally shop the demos around after the three hour session. Jim is delighted after hearing his voice on a record for the first time.

"Actually, I think the music came to my mind first and then I made up the words to hang onto the melody, some kind of sound. I could hear it, and since I had no way of writing it down musically, the only way I could remember it was to try and get words to put to it. And a lot of times I would end up with just the words and couldn't remember the melody." - Jim Morrison

Sun. Sept. 4th1965 Jim Writes His Parents (DU)
Around this time, Jim writes his parents in London disclosing his plans to sing with a band. Jim's father, an admiral in the navy, vehemently disagrees with Jim's choice and is very upset with his son. He writes Jim back conveying his objection while mentioning paying for four years of college, Jim abandoning his piano lessons as a child, never caroling with the family, and most importantly mentioning the band will never amount to anything. Jim isn't good at taking criticism and never writes his family again!

"I was in another group and John was telling me about this group he was in called The Doors. They had this wild and crazy guy, Jim Morrison, who was going to be the lead singer even though he couldn't sing at the time. But I knew he had potential because he had just started singing about a month before and he was already pretty good. A couple weeks after John joined they needed another guitar player. John brought Jim over to my house and we hit it off good. So we rehearsed and that was it."
Robby Krieger

Late September: Robby Krieger - Joins The Doors (DU)
Uncertain and dissatisfied with the direction of the band Rick and Jim Manzarek decide to quit returning to school. John asks friend Robby Krieger to play guitar with the band. Robby is a talented guitar player who can play many styles including a mean bottleneck that Jim loves immediately and asks him to play on every song they rehearse. Robby likes the feel of the music and continues to play with the band quitting his other band The Clouds and becoming the final member completing the group.
The band moves the equipment out of the Manzarek's and continues rehearsing 5 days a week at Ray's beach house, the garage of friend Hank Olguin behind a Santa Monica Greyhound bus depot in Venice, or Robby's house.

Late October: Provisional Contract - Columbia Records (DU)
The Doors members are taking the demos around, individually and as a band, to local record companies but are repeatedly shown the door for being too different. The band sees a picture of Billy James from Columbia Records in a trade magazine wearing a beard and think he looks hip - let's try him! The band meets with Billy and two days later are notified by his secretary that he wants to sign the band. The Doors are offered a five-and-a-half year deal with Columbia Records with a six month initial term, during which the company agrees to produce a minimum of four sides and release a minimum of two. Billy doesn't want the band to be hung up if nothing seems to be going on. The band, especially Jim, is delighted with the deal.

"One day late in '65, I came back from lunch and there were these guys waiting for me. It was them, The Doors. They had a quality that attracted me to them immediately. I guess they appealed to the snob in me because they were UCLA graduates and I thought, 'Great, here are some intellectual types getting involved with rock 'n' roll.' They played me an acetate of several songs they'd recorded. The music was so raw, so basic, so simplistic, so unlike anything I was familiar with. It intrigued me that they could combine this sort of music with such interesting lyrics." - Billy James

"It's incredible they got a deal off that first demo, because they almost sounded incompotent. The female bass player is like a full beat behind on everything." - Bill Siddons

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

From Follow The Music #11

RAY MANZAREK:
People who had let their hair grow long, people who saw the Beatles and the Stones and the English invasion and thought that was definitely the way to look. And the Strip was a safe haven for that kind of person, the freaks, the outsiders, the different people.

ROBBY KRIEGER:
Every night in the summertime it was just one big street scene. Cars lined up bumper to bumper.

ROBBY KRIEGER:
We hit all the clubs. The Sea Witch, an underground kind of place. Pandora's Box, the Unicorn, the Trip, The Galaxy, next to the Whisky, Brave New World, Bido Lito's.

MIRANDI BABITZ:
My shop was right next door to a shop called the Psychedelic Conspiracy, so we had a hot little corner, right where Holloway runs into Sunset. My husband was in a band, and the shop was full of musicians. We had a drum kit set up in the back for anybody that dropped in.

John Densmore's band at the time and my husband's band were sharing a set of equipment. I had this big old Cadillac, and we would load the band stuff in the trunk and drive back and forth on Sunset, unload it on the stage and they'd play an early set, and then we'd truck it all down to the other end of the Strip for the other band to play a late set.

ROBBY KRIEGER:
Gazzari's was where the local groups played, more or less.

BILL GAZZARI:
The Doors were boys who kept sitting on the stoop and asking me if they could come in and audition. The one that did the most talking was Jim Morrison. I said, “Well, Jim, you got to wear shoes to come in here.” So he turned around, went back out and sat out there on the ledge, just joined the hippies, as inside the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield and Ike and Tina Turner would play. And then he'd hit me up again a couple of days later: “We want to audition.” And I said, “Well, Jim, we can work it out, but you gotta wear shoes.” One day he said, “Bill, can we come in now?” I leaned over the counter and he had one shoe on. I walked around the counter and I seen that he didn't have a shoe on the other foot. I said, “Did you lose a shoe?” He said, “No, I found one, so I could get in.”

JOHN DENSMORE:
Our first real paying gig, if you could call it that, was at a little club called the London Fog.

ROBBY KRIEGER:
Like a little dive, but it was near the Whisky, so that was good. This guy who ran it was named Jesse James. Like a hustler guy. A nice guy, though. Years later I saw him, he was driving a cab.

RAY MANZAREK:
For our audition he said, “Come down and I'll let you play one entire night.” We called everyone we knew, all the guys from UCLA, all the girls. The place was packed. Jesse was just delirious: “God, you guys, this is great. You're a really good band, and I haven't seen this place so crowded in a long time. You're definitely hired. Can you start tomorrow, Friday?” And of course Friday night came round and all our friends were gone, there were six or seven people in the club. Jesse said, “Gee, I can't understand it, there were so many people last night, it's Friday night, I thought the place would be packed. I wonder where everyone is.” Of course we never said a word.

Next night, five people came in the club, the night after that four, the night after that six, and on the weekend all of ten or eleven. An occasional sailor would come in, two sailors, an occasional businessman. Most of the time there were about seven people in the club, the four Doors, the waitress, the bartender, who was none other than Jesse James, and Rhonda Lane, go-go dancer.

Now, Rhonda Lane, go-go dancer, was slightly overweight, but she certainly could shimmy. She was wearing a fringed outfit, she had go-go boots and sort of a discreet bikini, circa 1966. She go-goed to our music in her go-go cage, but it was extremely difficult for her. You could go-go to Johnny Rivers, do the Frug and the Watusi, but unfortunately Rhonda was attempting to dance those patterned, styled dances to the music of a group of acid-heads who had completely spaced out and gone into the ozone and were playing Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Muddy Waters and Igor Stravinsky rhythms all wrapped into one. I mean, we were in our own universe and our own floating, bobbing time structure and rhythmic structure, to which you could not dance the Frug or the Watusi or the Swim. Poor Rhonda. She was absolutely delightful, but Rhonda and the Doors never really had any kind of communication at all. We thought we were Dadaists, German surrealists. That was everything we had studied, that was the whole ball game, to be Brecht and Weill. Or if we couldn't be Brecht and Weill, we were going to be Stravinsky and Diaghilev and Nijinsky. We were going to do the “Rite of Spring” musically before your very ears. Listen while we play for you at the London Fog, and Rhonda Lane tries to do a nautch girl coochie dance to the Indian rhythms of ‘The End.'

There's nobody in the club, but we knew that we were doing it for ourselves, we're preparing for the onslaught, the assault on the psyche of complacent, bourgeois America. We had been burnt by the fire of emptiness, the fire of vacuity. There was no one in the damn place, we had to create the fire within ourselves, to nurture ourselves and to create that spontaneous moment that we could be artists for the four of us.

We had made a demo. And we walked the streets of Los Angeles, record company to record company, saying, “Hey, we're a new rock and roll band, we're called the Doors.” And we got turned down by everybody. We walked into Lou Adler's office and he put the first song on, played it for ten seconds, lifted the needle, on to the next song, five seconds, next song ten seconds, next song five seconds, last song two. It was like nnnnnnnnnn-nnnnn-nnnnnnnnn-nnnnn-nn. And at the end of it he said, “Sorry, nothing here I can use.” Liberty Records—Joe Sarasino played the first couple of songs and didn't like them. He had a hit with some kind of rock and roll surf song with Twilight Zone stuff going on, and I said, “Play the one at the end of the demo, ‘A Little Game,' “ because I thought it had that same kind of tink-tink sound like outer space. And when he heard the lyrics, “Once I had a little game, I think you know the game I mean, the game called go insane,” when he heard “Crawl back in my brain, go insane,” he freaked and just ripped the needle off and said, “Get outta here! Take this record and get out! You guys are sick! Don't ever come back in my office again!” So we got rejected by everybody, except Billy James at Columbia Records.

BILLY JAMES:
They had no appointment. Somehow they got into the building. Somehow my secretary took a liking to them. When I got back from lunch, there they were around her desk. They weren't falling all over themselves with eagerness to see me. If they were salivating over a possible record contract, they weren't showing it. Jim and Ray—right away I could see that they were smart, the intelligence behind the creative soul. Oh, UCLA film students? How interesting. Tell me more. They had their acetate with them. We had maybe a hundred acetates a week coming in. Their music was different. It had an insidious quality, not just moody, almost threatening, a quality of implied danger. “The game called go insane”—what an odd idea for a three-minute song that you want to get on AM radio and have little girls dancing to. “Go insane”—that's an option we hadn't considered in rock and roll.

RAY MANZAREK:
Billy was great. At the time, you could tell a person who was turned on, shall we say, as opposed to a person who had not expanded his consciousness. I looked in Billy's eyes and I started to giggle. Jim said, “Shut up, Ray.” And Billy said, “What are you laughing at?” And I said, “It's so good to see you, man.” Finally, somebody who had expanded their consciousness. And Billy said, “I like what you guys are doing. You guys are now signed to Columbia Records.”

BILLY JAMES:
But Columbia did nothing. Weeks went by, months, and then they put the Doors on their drop list.

ROBBY KRIEGER:
The funny thing is that we never doubted for a minute that we were going to be big. We knew immediately that we had the best material of any group, we knew that we had the best-looking singer of any group. What could go wrong?

RAY MANZAREK:
Back to the London Fog.

JOHN DENSMORE:
But the Whisky was the best club on the Strip.

RAY MANZAREK:
Every other night we would stroll over and stand at the doorway and look in.

JOHN DENSMORE:
Mario was the infamous doorman who, you know, loved everybody and knew everybody, all the bands, all the people. He sort of like ran the block. It was his ship. He loved the street. He saw it all. Kept the police happy, and loved the music, and loved to keep law and order. If there was a row, he loved that too. I saw him level folks that were out of line. “That'll show ‘em!” Then, “How ya doin', John? Yeah, yeah, how's Julia?” Yin and yang.

RAY MANZAREK:
The place was packed and people were dancing and rocking and singing, and boy, we would just look in there, knowing they would never let us in, you'd have to pay to get in and we didn't have enough money, because we didn't make enough at the London Fog. But we were dying to play the Whisky. If only we could play there then we would really have made it.

Jesse said to us, “We're not getting a lot of people in here, I'm going to have to fire you guys.” On our last night, who comes walking in but Ronnie Haran, the booker at the Whisky. She had nothing to do, just came down the street, or maybe had heard something about the group, who knows, but came in, took one look at Jim Morrison and fell head over heels mad in love. She said, “I'm the booker at the Whisky, and I want you guys to be the house band.”

We looked at each other and said, “Far out. Serendipity”—this is how things were construed in the psychedelic age. Ronnie said, “Can you start on Monday?” I of course said, “Yeah!” Jim said, “I don't know, I'm not so sure. Give me a call tomorrow and we'll see.” Ronnie walked out and I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “Of course we're going to take the gig. But, Ray, we don't want to appear over-anxious.”

We were the house band. We'd play a set, the headliner would play a set, we'd play a set, the headliner would play a set. The Turtles and the Doors. Captain Beefheart and the Doors. John Lee Hooker and the Doors. Otis Redding and the Doors. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and the Doors. Buffalo Springfield and the Doors. And Van Morrison and Them and the Doors. Jim Morrison and Van Morrison on the same stage—what an incredible gig that was. That was a famous jam. We did ‘Gloria,' and of course nobody taped it.

ROBBY KRIEGER:
It's funny, because we never knew Van Morrison or what he was like until he came to the Whisky, and there he was stomping around, throwing the mike just like Jim would, you know—oh, no, my God, another Morrison! You think of him later more as doing nice songs and stuff, but in the early Whisky days he was a terror. I mean you'd be afraid to come anywhere near that stage—drunk as hell, throwing the mike around, screaming and railing and stuff. He had some real devils inside.

PAUL ROTHCHILD:
The thing that was so interesting to me was to learn how much chaos there was inside the group Them. It's almost as if Jim studied their chaos and brought it into the Doors.

DIGBY DIEHL:
The Whisky was always a tourist place, but the local crowd that came was very much attracted to that darker side, the powerful weird thing that they were doing.